how do I search the internet ?

Each of these Internet search engines lets you find web sites and Internet files that include the words you search for. They are all different and when one does not produce what you are looking for, try another. They all work a little differently, too, so take time to read their help files to improve your searches.

AltaVista (http://altavista.digital.com/)

This is one of the largest Internet search engines. It searches over 40 million web pages. Because of its size, your search words should be as precise as possible or you may get too many hits to look through. You can search either web sites or Usenet articles. The basic search can use + and - prefixes to ensure or exclude terms from the search, and quotes to ensure adjacency (see below). The Advanced Search allows AND, OR, AND NOT, and NEAR (within 10 words) as Boolean expressions and limiting by dates. Use of parentheses are encouraged to group expressions. It has many new features, including search by specific language and sophisticated techniques for refining searches and ranking results.

INFOSEEK (http://www.infoseek.com).

Infoseek searches 30 million or more well chosen web pages plus gopher and ftp sites. It also searches Usenet newswires, major newspapers, newsgroups and Usenet FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions files) as separate choices. Don't overlook the FAQ search as an excellent source of its own.
Infoseek uses the following conventions:

Consecutive capitalized words (e.g., River Phoenix) requires the words to be found consecutively. Use commas to break up capitalized terms that shouldn't be consecutive.
"Double quote" marks around a phrase also force the terms to be consecutive.
Hyphenated-words forces words separated by a hyphen to be within one word of each other in either order.
[Square brackets] force the bracketed words to be within 100 words of each other.
Pluses (+) and minuses (-) immediately before a word force the word to be included or NOT to be included respectively.

Northern Light (http://www.nlsearch.com)

Northern Light is a new search engine offering full text search of "every page out there" as well as licensed sources from entire magazines, reference works, and newswires "not found on the web". It claims it does not yet support full Boolean searching, although it is under development and some of works pretty well now. It supports +, -, OR, NOT, and AND. Use double-quote marks around terms which should appear consecutively. It is best to use a number of terms, and the search results will provide hits that use most of them. Use OR between search terms to get broader results.

Northern Lights also categorizes all documents that it indexes. When an initial search is performed, Custom Search Folders are listed on the left side of the screen that can be used to see the results by a particular subject, type, or source.

Early tests with this new search engine have been very promising. Try it!

Excite (http://www.excite.com)

Excite searches over 50 million web pages or alternately Usenet newsgroups, website reviews, or newspaper and magazine news sources. The last category is not available from the form below, but only from the site itself. Excite also provides conceptual results based on searching for other words with the same meaning (synonyms) as well as by exact word matches. It has its own built-in thesaurus to provide synonyms for conceptual instead of exact word searches. It supports +, -, AND, OR, AND NOT, and parentheses in Boolean expressions. It is particularly powerful when you pick out a good hit from your search and select "More Like This" as a follow-on query-by-example.

Lycos (http://www.lycos.com)

Lycos is another large search engine, searching over 50 million web pages as well as gopher and ftp sites. It has recently undergone some major improvements in its search engine, and if you haven't visited it recently, it is worth a fresh visit. It has some very sophisticated features now for controlling proximity and sequencing of search terms. It searches for graphics or sound files as separate choices. The basic search ORs all terms, but gives preference to results with the most hits. The Custom Search allows you to AND all terms, OR all terms, or return at least a selected number of terms. It also allows you to limit or include lower scoring returns.

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HotBot (http://www.hotbot.com)

HotBot is one of the largest search engines in pages indexed. It supports full Boolean searching and recognizes AND, OR, NOT, (or the equivalent symbols: &, |, !), parentheses, double quotes, + and -. It also supports a system of modifying the first round search to refine it.

DejaNews (http://www.dejanews.com)

DejaNews searches past and present newsgroup articles. It is particularly valuable when searched carefully, because newsgroup articles themselves include information and point to many resources that might not be found through web searches. It is one of the best ways to find a brand new web site that other engines have not yet indexed. It offers both a basic and a power search. The power search lets you control whether any or all terms are included in returns, and various controls on the format of the returned information. It now supports full Boolean operators (AND, OR, AND NOT and parentheses). Proximity is supported by placing a caret (^) between terms.

Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com)

Yahoo is the biggest of the subject-matter organized directories. It is very useful to find good collections of resources for a topic. It has an advanced search mode, too

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